


Blurred Lines

by QuenchiestCactusJuice99



Category: Naruto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 10:23:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13545375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuenchiestCactusJuice99/pseuds/QuenchiestCactusJuice99
Summary: He’d succeeded. Oh yes, he’d finally managed to become immortal. Yet... it’s not worth it. And he’d realized that a long time ago, but... but he kept pushing anyway.





	Blurred Lines

Orochimaru stared out over the barren, moonlit landscape, devoid of any color, besides brown and black and dark yellow.

He’d done it. He was immortal...  
but the price wasn’t worth it. 

He was silent as a light breeze ruffled his long, ink-dark hair a little, hissing through the char-black, twisted tree trunks devoid of life, brittle branches looking like fire had burned away all the foliage and left the base. He’d been alive for longer than he cared to think about, alive and alone. No one else was immune to disease, and the destructive illness that seemed to spread through touch was unknown; no one had a cure. No one was left. 

The cliff he sat on was dead, dead as the trees and grass that seemed as affected by the illness as the shriveled bodies that littered any rotting village he dared venture to. So he sat on his cliff, spending his time watching the sun rise and set, the moon and stars drift across the sky.

Immortality was lonely. There was no one left, yet he had felt alone far before he had achieved his goal. Yes, he had felt empty far before any of this. 

His hand reached forward hesitantly, fingers brushing the carving on the rock. He traced the name gently, and moved his hand lower to trace the rough illustration beneath it. When he finished mapping out the lines of the terribly, personally engraved toad, he let his gaze flit up to the full moon, which was absolutely not blurry from his absolutely not wet eyes. “Hmph... dobe.”

And there was no one around, no one left to see a single tear slowly slide down a pale, gaunt face. No one around, no one left to see a silently suffering man - because even though shinobi often rejected the fact that they were human, and even though he was immortal, he was still just a man, and now, in his misery, the thought comforted him - disappear in a flash. And had anyone been able to bear witness to the event, they would have found that the only hint that anyone was there at all was a small, desolate patch of smoking ground, and a square, flat rock etched with a toad and a name.

Jiraiya.


End file.
